548 



SOILS. 



6 fet The Dnpont Lakes in Carbon Co., Wyo- 

 ming, are four in number, varying in area from 4 to 

 2000 acres, their waters saturated with sulphate and 

 carbonate of soda. One of these hikes is covered 

 by two claims, known as the New York and Phila- 

 delphia claims, tin- former including ICO, the latter 

 80 acres. One bore hole, sunk 50 foot from tin; 

 shoro, showed a l*'d of 4 feet of soda; another, 230 

 feet out, went through 14 feet of solid soda without 

 reaching its bottom. This is over 70 per cent, sul- 

 phate of soda. The percentage of carbonate of soda 

 in much greater in the Dnpont than in the Donney 

 and the Union Pacific Lakes, amounting, in some of 

 the deposits mode by evaporation, to 59.24 per cent. 

 Near Morrison, Colorado, the soil, over an area of 

 80 acres, is impregnated with soda salts to a depth 

 of 52 feet There is another large deposit near Cro- 

 ton Springs, Arizona, where a thick bed of the sev- 

 eral salts of soda covers an area of several square 

 miles. Few of these deposits havo been examined 

 with a view to their utilization, the distance from 

 railroads and high cost of transportation rendering 

 them unavailable at present 



As for the uses to which soda is applied, they are 

 manifold. One of the most important of these is 

 the glass industry, which consumes abont half the 

 soda used in the United States. In 1885 the con- 

 sumption in this industry was : Soda ash, 60,050 

 tons ; salt-cake, 23,419 tons ; nitrate of soda, 2987 

 tons ; common salt, 2323 tons making a total of 

 88,779 tons. The use of salt cake or sulphate of 

 soda in this industry has largely increased of recent 

 years, its percentage increasing from 14 in 1880 to 

 28 iu 1885. Another large soda consuming industry 

 is the soap manufacture, while soda is an important 

 requisite in paper making, in dyeing and bleaching ; 

 of cotton and woollen goods, in boiler cleaning, etc. 

 It is used in considerable quantities in the making of 

 baking-powders, which now replace yeast in most 

 American kitchens. Bicarbonate or sesqniearbonate 

 of soda is an essential element of these powders, 

 the purpose being to develop carbonic-acid gas in the 

 interior of the dough, a result similar to that which 

 is attained by the use of yeast. Soda bicarbonate is 

 also used as one of the constituents of soda-powders 

 and seidlitz-powders. These are but a few of the 

 uses to which the Halts of soda are put. Th< y ..: 

 used also in the starch, sugar, glucose, oil refining. 

 candle, aniline dyes, wood-pulp, earthenware and 

 pottery, dynamite, and many other industries, the 

 number and diversity of which are sufficient warrant 

 for the statement made at the beginning of this ar- 

 ticle that soda is for the most important chemical 

 prodnct used in human industries. (c. it.) 



SOILS. Soils an? the results of two active and in- 

 cessant terrestrial influence^, the disintegration of the 

 rock materials of the earth's surface, and the deposit 

 in the abraded material of organic substances, the 

 prodnct of animal and vegetable life processes, and 

 of the decay of dead organic matter. To the former 

 the great bulk of all soils is due ; to the latter, much 

 of their fertility. The breaking down of the rocks is 

 a slow but incessant process. It is effected by the 

 agency of rains and running water, of frosts and 

 sunshine, of atmospheric action, and other less im- 

 portant influences ; the small rock particles thus pro- 

 duced and scattered through the soil being grad- 

 ually reduced to a finer stage by minor infl : 

 among them the action of plant-roots and of the 

 mall animals which burrow in the earth's surface. 

 The influence of earthworms, ants, and other small 

 creatures upon the constituents and conditions of the 

 oil has of late years been shown to be considerable 

 and important. Organic materials are deposited in 

 the soil largely by natural processes, and to an im- 

 portant extent through the agency of man. These in 

 balk constitute but a small percentage of the soil, 



but their utility is far in excess of their quantity. 

 Many of the most important food plants feed largely 

 upon them, and exhaust them from the soil at a rate 

 that requires their annual restoration. Human : 

 assists nlso in the making of soils by the addition of 

 fertilizing mineral substances, such as lime, the min- 

 eral phosphates, etc., thus adding to imperfect soil* 

 some important element of fertility, or modifying 

 the character of the soil so as to adapt it to the pro- 

 duction of certain crops. Through these ap. 

 of man and other animals, and through the ! 

 grating processes of nature, soils of greatly varied 

 composition are produced, their character often 

 changing considerably within a fewmiles of distance, 

 and occasionally within the limits of a single farm. 



Soils, considered in reference to their degree of 

 openness and closeness, lie between two extremes, 

 the sandy and the clayey. Their degree of fertility, 

 however, does not conform to this division, the sandy 

 soils, for instance, while frequently barren, being by 

 no means always so, since the composition of sand 

 may very greatly vary. The distinction of these 

 two extremes is that of degree of comminution of 

 material and retention of moisture, and of compara- 

 tive permeability, rather than of fertility, the latter 

 quality being by no means dependent on the above 

 characteristics. Austere barrenness, as a rule, is con- 

 fined to the silk-ions sands, and to rainless and 

 Btreamless regions, there being scarcely any other 

 condition of soil and climate that is cot adapti d to 

 the free growth of plant forms. Of the sands and 

 gravels that cover such vast spaces in the Eastern 

 Hemisphere, the infertility is due rather to lack of 

 rain than to native barrenness. The sands of tin- Sa- 

 hara and of Arabia show no lack of fertility when) 

 watered by springs and wells. These vast stretches 

 of sandy soil arc paralleled iu other parts of the earth 

 by other homogeneous dejwsits of great extent. In 

 Houiliern Russia, for instance, there is a vast tract, 

 200,000,000 acres in extent, of " black earth," which 

 is of extraordinary and persistent fertility. In tho 

 highlands of Scotland and Bavaria, as also iu Prussia 

 and elsewhere, are great stretches of moorland, bear- 

 ing only a nearly useless growth of heath or UIORS. 

 In the United States we have similar great homo- 

 geneous surfaces, as in the alluvial bottom lands of 

 the Mississippi, the compact, deep, widely extended 

 soil of the prairies, the broad reaches of alkali 

 lands in the western mountain region, tho sands < f 

 New Jersey and some other localities, tho vast 

 swam]) regions along the southern Atlantic coast, 

 and other less extended instances. But as a whole, 

 the soils of this country as of other regions aro 

 heterogeneous in distribution, depending largely 

 upon the character of the underlying rock, and in 

 many cases differing greatly within limited areas 

 clay, sand, gravel, vegetable mould, and unlike mix- 

 tures of these, occurring often in close proximity to 

 each other. 



The agencies and methods by which the hard rock 

 surfaces are broken into fragments and ground down 

 into soils, have been sufficiently considered in the 

 article on AOBICDLTURE, Chap. II., in thi.s work, and 

 we need here but consider some further aspects of 

 the subject. There are two broad classes into which 

 soils may be divided, the sedentary and the t Kins- 

 ported. Of these the sedentary soils, or soils in 

 place, are those in which the materials of rock dis- 

 integration have not been moved by natural agencies, 

 but remain where produced. They have arisen from 

 the weathering of exposed rocks, which they still 

 cover or lie contiguous to, and with which they are 

 identical in composition. Such soils have usually 

 little depth, their presence protecting the rocks w hicli 

 they cover from further disintegration. The inspec- 

 tion of the underlying rock usually gives valnable in- 

 formation as to their composition end Agricultural 



